Political Union or space of economic coordination: the European integration project indefinability and the Treaty of Lisbon

Abstract

The aim of the present study is, in the light of the challenges faced by the EU regional integration, to evaluate the general framework of reforms proposed by the Lisbon Treaty. More specifically, to analyze the effects of the institutional, economic and political dimensions on the dynamic of the reform process of integration. The results of the study show that in term of the configuration of the European regional integration process, three main omissions can be observed: democracy deficit, competences distributions between the EU and the member states, and, finally, the challenges of efficiency in term of decision making and implementation. The Lisbon Treaty represents a general framework to overcome all those limitations and to keep also a balance between federal and intergovernamental tendencies. Nevertheless the Irish No to the treaty and the skeptic among many other member-states reviewed the discussion about the concept and strategy of integration framework: just a coordination of an economic space or a political union.